TRY plant trait database now publicly available

The continously growing database is now published under a CC-BY license

Jena. The latest, improved version 5 of the TRY database has been released on March 26, 2019. Compared to version 4, released in 2017, the number of trait records in the TRY database has further increased from about 7 to nearly 12 million, the number of plant taxa from about 148,000 to almost 280,000 of about 400.000 extant species.

Even though the availability of trait data was restricted, the TRY database has been increasingly used for scientific publications worldwide. So far TRY data contributed to 225 scientific publications, which have been cited almost 10,000 times (h-index 43, Google Scholar) with a continuously growing trend.

With the release of version 5, trait data are now publicly available under a creative commons attribution license (CC-BY), which means anybody can use the data under the only condition of appropriate citation. However, access to else unpublished data may be restricted temporarily on request, normally for up to two (+2) years, until data are published in the scientific literature.

TRY is a network of vegetation scientists founded in 2007 with the aim to provide a global database of plant traits to support Earth system science and ecology. TRY is headed by Future Earth, the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and iDiv, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research.

Contact:

Dr. Jens Kattge
Group Leader Functional Biogeography
Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (idiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Tel: +49 (0)3641 576226
Email: jkattge@bgc-jena.mpg.de

Further Information:

Webpage TRY database
Webpage TRY Database at Google Scholar